Suddenly, his body relaxed and he leant forward slightly. ‘I . . . have . . . him . . . Mr Keller . . . I . . . have . . .’ His body grew stiff again and the tension returned to his features. ‘No . . . it’s Rogan . . . I seek . . . only Rogan . . .’
Keller stared at the distressed medium anxiously. The man was going through mental torment. He remembered to fix his concentration on the deceased senior pilot again and did his best to hold the image there in his mind.
Hobbs’s breathing became even deeper and more urgent. He arched his body backwards and raised his face towards the ceiling. Suddenly, his head snapped forward, his chin almost resting on his chest. His body slumped in the chair.
His eyes slowly opened and looked up at Keller.
Keller felt a cold sensation on the back of his neck, icy fingers brushing his spine. It wasn’t Hobbs sitting there any longer; his whole personality had changed. It was something loathsome there. Something abhorrent.
The room itself seemed darker – the shadows had deepened – and it had grown so much colder.
‘Kell . . . er . . .’ Its voice was low, raspy, just a whisper. He stared in horror at the figure that was Hobbs and yet, not Hobbs. The eyes bored back into his and the wet lips took on a sneer. ‘Kill . . . him . . . Keller . . . he . . . did . . . this.’
The co-pilot could not speak. His mouth was dry and his throat almost painfully constricted. Kill who?
Wetness seeped from Hobbs’s mouth and began to run down his chin. ‘Kill . . . Keller . . . you . . . Dave . . . Dave . . . don’t . . .’ The voice had changed to a different voice. Hobbs’s eyes had closed again but the agony continued to show in his face. ‘Dave, the crash . . . was . . .’ Keller recognized the voice. Rogan. He leant across the table, his heart pounding. ‘Don’t . . . blame . . . away !’ The voice changed again, became a snarl. ‘Leave the cunt to us!’
Hobbs’s eyes snapped open and glared at Keller malevolently. The words had become sharp and forceful, no longer hesitant.
‘Keller, Keller, Keller! You’re ours, you bastard, ours!’ It was low, almost whispered, filled with malice. ‘He killed us, Keller, you will kill him!’
The co-pilot found it difficult to breathe. It was as though cold hands were clasped around his throat, squeezing slowly. The air seemed stale, then fetid with the smell of excrement. He pulled at the invisible hands and inexplicably it helped.
‘Kill who?’ he managed to gasp. ‘Who is this speaking?’
The thing opposite laughed. Coarse, obscene laughter. It grinned evilly at Keller. ‘He. Must. Die! You think you’ve escaped, bastard? You think you’re free? Think again! Go to him, and you come to us! Escape from death? No escape – for him! None for you!’
The stench made Keller retch. The invisible hands had moved to his wrists now and held them firmly against the tabletop.
‘Dave!’ The voice was Rogan’s now. The grip on his wrists slackened and he wrenched them from the table. ‘Help . . . us . . . Dave . . . help . . . us!’ ‘The bastard can’t help!’ The other voice. ‘He can kill though.’ Laughter. ‘You will, won’t you, Keller?’ It took on a whining, simpering tone. But it was false. ‘Answer, cunt! You answer! No peace for you, Keller, ever. Die with us. Why don’t you? Why don’t you? We won’t let you live!’
Suddenly, the voices were not just coming from the medium: they came from different corners of the room, while Hobbs just sat there grinning. Whispers, only whispers; but pleading. Afraid. Hobbs laughed aloud.
‘Listen to them, Keller. I rule. I have the power.’ The figure spat out the words viciously.
‘Who are you? Where is Rogan?’ Keller leant forward across the table, anger mixed with fear.
‘Rogan is with us, Keller. As you should be. Join us, Keller.’
‘Who are you?’ the co-pilot asked again, his words determined.
‘The one they said hated. Don’t you know?’ Hobbs sniggered.
‘Who?’ Keller repeated.
‘Keller, he killed me.’ The co-pilot turned his head sharply. The voice had come from behind him. ‘It was in the case. Remember? He . . . put . . .’ The voice began to fade. ‘It . . .’
‘Find him, Dave.’
‘Find him!’
‘You must.’
‘Help us!’
The whispers came from the walls, confused and overlapping, despairing. And all the while, the thing in Hobbs laughed.
‘You see, Keller, they want to be free. You see how afraid they are? Afraid of me. You know me, don’t you? Don’t you?’
A hand suddenly snaked forward and grabbed the gin bottle at its base. He held it up then brought it crashing down, its neck breaking off against the side of the table. Keller watched in fearful fascination as Hobbs slowly raised the broken bottle to his lips, and he shouted ‘No!’ as the medium jammed the jagged glass against his own mouth and began to drink. Blood mixed with gin ran down his chin.
Then, with a scream, Hobbs was on his feet, his mouth a bloody mess, his eyes wide and terrifying. His shoulders heaving, he glared down at Keller, a gurgling, growling noise coming from his throat. His words were unintelligible, but as he moved around the table, advancing on the co-pilot, holding the jagged glass before him like a weapon, his intentions became clear.
For a moment, Keller sat rooted to the spot, a desert mouse waiting in paralytic fear for the snake to strike; but then he moved fast. As he jumped up and away from the approaching figure, he pulled the table up with him and pushed it violently towards the medium. Hobbs stumbled against it then sent it crashing to one side, an animal snarl of rage breaking down his disfigured lips. He lunged forward.
Keller picked up the chair and held it between them, using it as a shield. It was wrenched from his grasp with a force that wasn’t human and thrown across the room to be shattered against the wall. The whispers seemed louder, filling his head, confusing him, forcing him to stay where he was. He stumbled and fell heavily, bruising his knees, but managing to take some of the force with his hands. He tried to pull himself away from the being that was no longer Hobbs, but the man was over him now. He felt his hair being pulled and his head was dragged backwards, forcing him to look into the inverted face of evil. His neck was arched and exposed. The bottle, now held upside down like a grotesque dagger, was poised above him, its contents spilling on to his upturned face. The voices inside his head were laughing.
He screamed as the broken glass began its descent, but it never reached his throat. It stopped midway and hung there, the hand that grasped it shaking, the fingers around it white with strain. Suddenly, the glass shattered completely, shards falling into Keller’s vulnerable face, Hobbs’s hand becoming a red, mutilated, clenched fist. He heard the scream of pain and his head sprung forward as he was released. Hobbs’s figure dropped to its knees beside him, the little man holding his injured hand at the wrist, tears of pain running down his face and mingling with the blood around his mouth.
Keller lay on his side, shock preventing him from moving further.
‘Keller!’ The words were distorted, but the voice belonged to Hobbs. ‘What’s happened to me? My face! My hand!’
The co-pilot realized whatever had been inside the medium had gone now – gone back to the hell it had come from. The voices, too, were drifting away, sinking piteously into oblivion. And just as his own senses began to reel, as soft, wispy patterns began to float across his vision, he heard another voice. And as he sank and the patterns formed themselves into dark clouds that joined and swallowed up the light, he recognized the voice.
It belonged to Cathy.
12
Tewson peered closer at the thin score in the soil. He traced his fingers along the winter-hardened groove until they reached a point where the scarred earth became a tiny trench and finally disappeared under the surface. There were many such marks all around the field, some deep as though furrowed by a plough, others, like this, small and seemingly insignificant. But often even the tiniest track held a vital clue at it
s extremity: fragments of wreckage flung wide and forcefully on the aircraft’s impact with the ground.
He pushed a finger into the thimble-sized hole and felt something solid embedded there. Digging at the hardened surface, he cleared an area around the object and sighed dejectedly on finding the cause of the scar. He had been hoping for some mechanical element – anything that could be part of an explosive device. Instead he found a ring, its cluster of diamonds caked with mud. He placed it in a brown envelope where it clinked against several other small but valuable objects he had found that morning; lost possessions of the dead. Even after this time, the investigators were still finding such trinkets, although Tewson knew many of the valuables not destroyed in the crash but scattered around the proximate area would never be recovered. Anything that was found was returned to Consul Airlines and checked against a valuables’ list made up as accurately as possible with claims from the dead victims’ next of kin or associates.
Tewson looked up sharply as he heard his name being hailed from across the field. One of his colleagues was striding towards him waving an arm in a ‘come here’ gesture. He got to his feet and trudged over the frosted ruts of earth, his eyes still searching for any glint of metal, any concealed clue that might help affirm his suspicions.
‘What’s up?’ he called out, as he drew near to his duffle-coated colleague.
‘What’s up? Have you seen today’s Express?’ came the breathless reply. ‘Slater’s just sent me down from the hotel. He wants to see you.’
‘Oh Christ! What have I done to upset him now?’
‘You’ll find out soon enough, mate. If I were you I’d get up there sharpish.’
‘Well, what’s in the paper then?’ asked Tewson, a nagging suspicion waving a tiny red flag from the back of his mind.
‘He’ll tell you,’ said the other investigating officer, ‘if you don’t already know.’ He looked meaningfully at Tewson.
Tewson hurried anxiously across the field and towards the old bridge that joined Eton to Windsor. He had been lunching with an old acquaintance yesterday just before the terrible crash of glass and the screams had interrupted them. When he had rushed out to find Dave Keller crouched over the dead bodies of a woman and a naked man, he had immediately forgotten about his lunch companion. The thought now nagging at his apprehensive brain had to do with the fact that his old chum was a freelance journalist and they had been discussing the cause of the air crash! Tewson was very much aware that he had a tendency for over-enthusiasm where his personal theories were concerned; a tendency that caused him to talk too much. Discretion, unfortunately, had never been part of his make-up.
When he entered the hotel room and saw the look on Slater’s face he knew his fears had been well founded.
‘I want to know the meaning of this,’ the investigator-in-charge demanded angrily, as he threw the newspaper across his makeshift desk towards Tewson.
Tewson swallowed hard as he picked it up with nervous fingers. A knot tied itself in the pit of his stomach and tightened its string sharply and almost painfully as he read the bold serif headline: ‘BOMB CLAIMED TO BE CAUSE OF ETON AIR CRASH’. His bowels loosened slightly as he realized the implications of the headline: it had been his theory, nobody else’s. The story – and it was confirmed in the first few lead-in lines – could only have evolved from somebody on the investigating team and, although the source of the information was not revealed, it would be obvious to anyone in the department who the culprit was. He barely registered the minor adjacent story, concerning the mysterious death-plunge from a window of a married couple living in Eton. His freelance friend had had a financially rewarding day.
‘Well?’ The demand for an explanation was icily gruff.
‘I . . . er . . .’ Tewson found it difficult to take his eyes from the headline.
‘You leaked the information, didn’t you?’
He nodded numbly as he saw the story had been credited to his old friend. There was no doubt at all now.
‘I didn’t tell him this much,’ he stated weakly, scanning the story as he spoke. ‘Most of it’s pure conjecture on the reporter’s part.’
‘Is it really?’ And since when has a newspaper needed proven facts to print a story?’ Slater leant heavily on the desk. ‘I’ve warned you before, Tewson, about opening your mouth in the wrong places and at the wrong time. We’re going to have hell from the Ministry and the airline because of this! I know you’ve often been right in the past with your half-baked theories, but you’ve never before gone to the absurd lengths of announcing them to the press before they’ve been substantiated! It’s intolerable.’
‘But I told him it was just an idea – that there was no real proof!’
Slater was on his feet now, his knuckles white against the desk top. ‘You had no right to tell him anything!’ he stormed. ‘We’re bound by secrecy in this organization. You’re well aware of that! What the hell makes you think you’re so right, anyway?’
‘Everything we’ve learnt so far supports my theory of an explosion! It’s only a matter of time before it’s proved!’
‘Did it ever occur to you I might have an idea of my own?’ Slater glared across at him. ‘An idea that has much more substance than your sensationalized conclusion!’
Tewson could only stare back blankly at his superior. ‘You’ve never mentioned anything to me,’ he said.
‘Some of us gather the facts first then search for proof before we expound on our suppositions and announce them to the world!’ Slater made a visible effort to calm himself, then sat down sharply, indicating that Tewson should do the same.
When the bespectacled investigator had settled in a chair opposite him, Slater tried to keep his anger suppressed, speaking in a low and even voice: ‘To a certain extent, I agree with your notion of a bomb on board because many of the circumstances point in that direction. But they are also indicative of another cause.’
Tewson was grudgingly attentive.
‘In March of 1974,’ the senior officer went on, ‘a Turkish Airlines DC10 crashed just outside Paris. The evidence uncovered by America’s Federal Aviation Administration as to the cause bears a distinct resemblance to the evidence we have uncovered so far. I remember at the time there was speculation that a bomb might have been planted, but it was eventually found that in fact, due to a design defect, a rear cargo door fell off in flight and produced an explosive decompression. The passengers’ cabin floor collapsed and passengers still strapped in their seats were sucked out. The pilot’s control cables which run through the floor from the cockpit to the tail were severed, and it was this that caused the aircraft to plunge down, completely out of control.’ He lifted a wearily patient hand to quiet the protests that were about to burst forth from the young investigator. ‘Think about it, Tewson. The blue and yellow marks along one of the wings were made by the aircraft’s door which bears part of the company’s logo, and the sudden loss in communications – caused by the severing of control cables which itself probably caused the malfunctioning of other electrical circuits. All suggestive of an explosion, I grant you, but a decompression explosion not a manufactured explosion!’
Tewson was silent again, his mind racing from one thought to another. It was possible! It even sounded more likely. But sheer gut-feelings told him otherwise.
‘Now I’m not ruling out your theory, Tewson,’ Slater continued gravely, ‘and we’ll know the answer very soon. But the one salient fact that discredits it is this: It is virtually impossible to plant a bomb on board an aircraft with all the mechanical checking devices the airlines have in operation nowadays! Every major airline was sick of hijacks and bomb scares up until ’75 when they finally got together and brought in the highly sophisticated machinery that ruled out such risks. And you have the gumption to announce that all their efforts have been in vain!’ His voice was rising now, his anger building up again. ‘We are supposed to be a responsible organization and we cannot afford the criticism that will now be laid at our f
eet because of your thoughtless outburst of egotism!’
He looked hard and long into Tewson’s reddening face. ‘As from today, you are suspended from duty while this particular investigation is in progress. We may find a use for you elsewhere soon on another case. If we do, I’ll be in touch.’
It was Tewson’s turn to be angry now. He leapt to his feet and leant belligerently forward over the desk. ‘You haven’t proved that I’m wrong yet!’
‘And you haven’t proved you’re right!’ Slater retorted, glaring up into the fierce eyes of the younger man. ‘That’s beside the point anyway. It doesn’t matter who’s right and who’s wrong. It’s your indiscretion we’re talking about and your responsibility towards the AIB! Now get your things together and get out until you’re called for again.’
As Tewson whirled around and stormed towards the adjoining room where he had a few personal items stored, Slater completed his tirade by shouting: ‘And if you want to resign, that’s your affair!’
Tewson slammed the door shut behind him and leant his back against it for a few moments to regain his composure. ‘Bastard!’ he said aloud, as he angrily snatched off his glasses and began to polish them furiously with the end of his tie. He strode to the centre of the room and kicked out at the leg of a small coffee table. ‘I’ll prove I’m right,’ he told himself. ‘I’ll show that dimwitted old sod! How’s it going to look for him when they find out the truth and the man whose suspicions had been correct was under suspension. He’ll pay for it then, the bloody old fool!’
He stuffed his few odd pieces into a well-worn briefcase and left the room by the door leading directly into the hall. Downstairs, he stomped into the hotel bar, flung the briefcase against the counter bottom, and ordered a large whisky.
The whisky burnt his throat and he reached for the soda, glaring at the barely concealed smirk of the barman. Pulling a high stool towards him, he sat with his elbows fixed firmly and aggressively on the bar top, daring the barman to smile again. The white-jacketed barman picked up a clean glass and began to polish it vigorously with a cloth. He turned his back on Tewson. Gradually, he sipped more easily at the whisky, his breathing still short and sharp but slowing down with the calming effect of the alcohol. His mind was still racing, still angry with misguided grievance, but it, too, began to calm itself and think more constructively.
The Survivor Page 12